They Choose Us

By the time this posts, I may be a new mommy.

But as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says: DON’T PANIC!

No, I’m not pregnant.

When I moved from New York to Georgia, my chihuahua, Oliver, stayed behind with my mother. He was supposed to come live with me once I got settled, but in the end, he was happy with Mom and she was happy with him and so he stayed. And I’ve missed having a dog ever since.

For several reasons, I haven’t gotten one:

• I go out of town a lot and boarding is expensive.
• I’m only supposed to have two pets, per my lease, and I ended up accidentally adopting a couple stray kittens along the way, then brought one of my mother’s cats home with me this summer after a visit to Buffalo, which made three.
• I didn’t want the added responsibility.

Oliver Q. Chihuahua, Esq. (AKA Antonio Chocolat Chocolat, Chihuahua, Little Dog)

Well, last Thursday, The Universe took the decision out of my hands. Maybe. I don’t know for sure yet, but I have a sneaking suspicion.

The mailboxes are at the bottom of the hill that is the parking lot in my townhouse complex. Nearby are two Dumpsters. When I get home from work every afternoon, I drive down to the mailboxes, get the mail and then back up to my house. Last Thursday, a small dog with a collar ran in front of my car and I almost hit her. She ran across the lot and behind the townhouses. I got out of my car to look for her, but didn’t see her anywhere.

After I got the mail, I went home and stepped out back to see if I could see her. I heard barking coming from my right and walked around to find her on the porch of a neighbor’s house who wasn’t home. She was growling and barking and baring her teeth, tail between her legs: a tiny miniature pinscher.

There was no way I could get near her without injury, so I decided to get some twine and make a slip knot to go around her neck so I could take her inside where it was safe. The neighbor’s next-door neighbor was coming home at that moment, so I asked if she was the dog of the people whose porch she was on. The neighbor said no, they don’t have a dog.

Not good.

I got the twine and successfully lassoed the little dog. Almost immediately, she stopped barking and growling and asked me to pick her up. Immediately, I noticed a great deal of ticks on her tiny body, some of which had been there quite a while.

A cropped min-pin

Into the house, get the ticks off (I had to leave a couple until someone came home to help me hold her still), call the animal shelter and a couple other places the shelter suggested and nothing. No reports of a missing dog of her description. Now, she is a min-pin, but her ears and tail are not cropped and she’s been fixed. She was thin, but not so starving that her bones stuck out, so she’d eaten recently. She has a collar, but no tags and no tattoo indicating a microchip. Someone cared for and loved this dog. No one has reported her missing in any of the obvious places. Chris said he’d seen her running around the area for a few days.

Friday, I checked the newspaper and www.craigslist.com and placed my own ads. There were no ads for a missing dog of her description in those places, either.

Lily

She’s a very sweet dog, although the cats may disagree. They don’t seem to enjoy being chased. Harry is double the dog’s size (literally — I weighed them). I think the dog got a noseful of cat claw Friday morning, though, so the chasing may cease sooner than later. Possibly by the time this posts.

We’re calling her Lily.

Right now, it’s a waiting game. Someone may call. But my gut tells me no one will. And that brings me to my point: We don’t choose our pets; they choose us.

I’ve been thinking about wanting a dog more and more lately, and suddenly, this tiny creature scared and in need literally crosses my path. She’s small enough to travel easily almost anywhere I might go. She was in my house for only seconds and already behaving as if she’d lived there her entire life.

I would never have gone out and adopted a dog in the near future. So one adopted me (maybe!).

TUESDAY UPDATE: Still no calls or e-mails and she has no microchip.

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